AI Data & Products

Overview

During an AI conversation, the AI agent can go beyond the brand's stored knowledge by fetching live data from external systems and recommending products. This article covers the two dynamic content types visitors encounter: context tool forms (for real-time data) and product carousels (for recommendations).

Context Tool Forms

When the AI needs information from an external system to answer a visitor's question — like checking an order status, looking up an account, or querying a booking system — a context tool form appears in the chat.

API tools (also called context tools) are managed at Brand → (your brand) → Knowledge, on the API tools tab, where the description column is headed "When it is used". The allowance is per brand: 1 on the free plan, 20 on a paid plan. See the API Tools dashboard article.

What the Visitor Sees

An elevated card appears in the AI's place in the chat, under a Vex · AI assistant name row, holding:

A title: "Please provide the following information:"
One or more input fields with labels, on the page color
Required field indicators (asterisks) on mandatory fields
A solid Submit and a soft Cancel button, on the left
A close button (X) in the top corner
Validation errors in red below fields if input is invalid

How It Works

AI triggers the form

The AI recognizes it needs external data to answer the visitor's question. The form appears automatically in the chat — the visitor didn't have to do anything to trigger it.

Visitor fills in the fields

The visitor provides the requested information. Some fields may already be pre-filled by the AI based on earlier conversation context (e.g., if the visitor already mentioned their email).

Data is submitted

The visitor clicks Submit. The form disappears and the external API is called with the provided data.

AI responds with the result

The API response is fed back to the AI, which generates a natural-language answer. The visitor sees the response stream in word by word, just like a regular AI reply.

Field Types

Type	What Visitors See
Text	Standard text input field
Numeric	Number input with validation
Boolean	Two side-by-side buttons (e.g., "Yes" / "No") with customizable labels
Dropdown	Single-select menu with predefined options
Multi-select	Checkboxes for selecting multiple values

Boolean fields appear as a pair of clickable buttons, not a checkbox. The labels are customizable — for example, "Active" / "Inactive" or "Domestic" / "International".

Pre-filled Fields

The AI can automatically fill in fields using information from the conversation. For example, if a visitor already said "my email is [email protected]", the email field appears pre-populated.

Pre-filled values show in the input fields when the form opens. The visitor can review and edit them before submitting.

Auto-Submission

In some cases, the form skips the visitor entirely. If enough fields are pre-filled by the AI, the form can auto-submit without displaying — the visitor just sees the AI's answer appear as if it had the information all along.

There are four display modes that control this:

Mode	When the Form is Skipped
Always show	Never — form always appears even if fully pre-filled
Auto (required only)	When all required fields are pre-filled
Auto (all fields)	When every field (required and optional) is pre-filled
Auto (any field)	When any field is pre-filled (all required fields must still be covered)

When the API Fails

If the external API doesn't respond or returns an error, the visitor sees one of three outcomes:

A custom message explaining the issue (e.g., "Sorry, I couldn't check your order status right now")
An automatic handoff to a human agent
The AI falls back to answering with whatever knowledge is available

The visitor doesn't see raw errors — the experience is always handled gracefully.

Product Carousels

When a product source is connected, the AI can embed product recommendations directly into its responses. These appear as a horizontal scrollable carousel of product cards within the chat message. The catalogue and its sources are their own screen, at Brand → (your brand) → Products.

What the Visitor Sees

Each product card displays:

Product image — optimized thumbnail
Title — product name (truncated if long)
An option summary, or the description — see below
Price — if available

The carousel sits under the AI's text as a row of cards, with the price in your brand color. Visitors can swipe or drag horizontally to browse through the products.

Cards for a product with several versions

A product sold in several flavors, sizes or colors carries versions, and its card reflects that:

In place of the description, the card summarises the options — Flavor: 13 · Size: 3 — so the visitor sees at a glance what there is to choose from. A product with only one version keeps showing its description as before.
The price becomes a "from" price when the versions do not all cost the same: from €39.90, in the widget's own language (ab 39,90 € in German, 39 990 Ft-tól in Hungarian).

The "from" wording is part of the widget's own translations, so it follows the language the visitor is chatting in — not the language your catalogue is written in.

Cards for one exact version

The AI can also point a card at one specific version rather than the whole product. When it does, the card's title carries the options — Gold Whey · Pistachio · 1 kg — and the price is that version's own price rather than a range.

This is what happens when the conversation has narrowed to one choice: the visitor asked for the 1 kg pistachio, so the card is for the 1 kg pistachio.

Price, sale price and availability are read live from your catalogue at the moment the answer is written, so the figure in the AI's sentence and the figure on the product card beside it can never disagree. Changing a price costs nothing and needs no re-processing of the feed — those fields are deliberately not part of what gets indexed.

Cards can only be shown for products the AI was actually given on that turn. If it mentions a product it did not retrieve, the name stays as plain text and no card appears — which is deliberate: a card is a promise that the price and stock beside it were really read.

Interaction

Click a card to open the product page in a new tab
Swipe/drag to scroll through products on mobile or desktop
Product clicks are tracked in analytics so you can measure engagement

Product carousels appear automatically when the AI detects purchase intent or a product-related question. They don't require any visitor action to trigger — the AI decides when recommendations are relevant based on the conversation context.

How It Differs from Context Tools

	Context Tool Forms	Product Carousels
Requires visitor input	Yes — the visitor fills out a form	No — appears automatically
Fetches external data	Yes — calls an API with the form data	No — reads your own catalogue, with live price and stock
Appears as	A card with input fields	Product cards under the AI's text
Triggered by	AI needing real-time data	AI detecting product-related intent